Arts & Entertainment
Karen Ande
A weekly guide to music, theater, art, movies and more, edited by Rebecca Wallace
CHILDRENin a CRISIS by Be’eri Moalem any people assume that HIV/AIDS is no longer a problem, that somehow we have mastered this virus. Nothing could be further from the truth,” says Ruthann Richter, the author of “Face to Face: Children of the AIDS Crisis in Africa.” Richter, a Palo Alto medical writer, joined documentary photographer Karen Ande on a series of trips to Kenya starting in 2004. What started as a visit to help out at an orphanage in Navisha, Kenya, is now a newly published book. Richter and Ande, who were college roommates at Stanford
Left: Mary, whose parents died of AIDS, nearly starved to death before she was brought to a Kenya orphanage, according to the book “Face to Face.” Right: Blessing, center, and brother Felix, right, who are being cared for by their teenage sister in the Nairobi slum of Kibera.
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in the 1970s, will be discussing their new book in three local events in the coming weeks, including a Nov. 19 talk at Kepler’s Books. “I had been covering AIDS for decades as a medical writer,” said Richter, who is director of media relations at Stanford University and a former newspaper reporter. “But nothing could prepare me for the emotional impact
of seeing children living under the stark conditions we encountered.” The book is about children in Kenya and those who give them care. Its photos show kids in tattered clothing living in tin shacks or running around the streets alongside open-sewer trenches. Poorly supplied classrooms, hunger and desperation for survival are narrated in a set of moving stories. But despite the depictions of dire poverty and the grim reality of AIDS, “Face to Face” also manages to convey a sense of beauty, hope and happiness. “I agreed to take these photos in an ef-
Local author travels to Africa to document the pain and hope of kids living through the AIDS epidemic